The Adventurer (8 page)

It wasn’t until the moment he’d said it that Grange realized the truth of his words. There were no birds. Anywhere. The superstitious sailor in him had him tightening his fingers on the wheel.

“Perhaps it is nothing out of the ordinary to you, sir, for you see it most every day. But to me it is glorious.”

She pulled back the hood of her cloak and turned her face to the wind, eyes closed, arms wide as she embraced the day. Her dark hair, only loosely tethered with a blue ribbon, fluttered in the breeze, caressing her chin, a pale cheek, the tip of her graceful nose. Her lips were curved in a smile of pure, innocent pleasure.

Oh, to be thirty years younger ...

Grange reined back the thought when he happened to notice his crew. Up in the rigging, standing about the deck, they were all of them poised like eager panting puppies, watching the lass instead of seeing to their duties.

“Davy!” he shouted, effectively drawing the attentions of all. He glared at them one and all while calling, “Eyes wide?”

“Aye, Cap’n!”

The crew broke from their collective daze. They turned, resuming their work about the decks and masts. The wind seemed to soften. Grange relaxed his hold just a bit on the wheel, filling his lungs with a deep breath of salt air until ...

Davy’s voice sounded again, this time a degree less assuredly.

“Cap’n?”

“Aye? What is it, lad?”

“I’m ... not quite sure, sir. I think I might see something. Behind the fog ...”

“Where?”

“Afore ... dead ahead ... it looks like ...”

Grange craned his neck, trying to see above the foredeck. At first it looked like just a simple shifting of the mist, the ripple of the sea against shadow and light. Until another few moments passed. He looked closer, and what he saw made the lines around his eyes, the result of squinting too many years against the wind, crinkle into deeper, uneasy crevices.

That shifting shadow was looking very much like the figure of another ship.

Grange’s pulse tripped.
You’ve nothing to fear,
he told himself even as his hands tightened against the ship’s wheel.
The French would ne’er dare attempt any mischief this far to the north ... not with a treaty of peace all but signed betwixt the two crowns ...

“Davy, use your glass. D’you see any guns, lad?”

“Aye, sir. Fifteen, maybe twenty.”

“Gun ports?”

“Open, sir.” A moment passed, and then, “Sir?”

“Aye, Davy?”

“She’s an odd craft. Ne’er seen one like it. She’s painted gray, even her sails, like she belongs to the fog somehow ...”

“Captain Grange.” It was Lady Isabella’s voice. “Is there any cause for alarm, sir?”

He scarcely heard her. He certainly didn’t answer her. He was too caught up trying to decide whether he should slow up to draw alongside the other ship, or call for more sail, turn to starboard, and make a run for it.

“Davy!” he shouted.

“Aye, Cap’n?”

“Is she flying colors?”

A pause. “Aye, sir. She’s wearing the red Meteor ...” The British nautical flag. Grange let go a breath of relief.

“It’s union down, sir. And it looks like there’s a fire on deck ...”

“Hold!” Grange shouted without another moment’s hesitation. “Heave to, lads! She’s in distress!”

The crew jumped to order, scrambling up the rigging like spiders on a web, pulling up lines and repositioning the sails with clockwork precision. It was a maneuver they’d practiced time and again, and which they executed this time to perfection. In minutes, the ship was no longer pulling on the water’s current, but drifting, losing speed. Grange held to the wheel, steering a flagging course for the other ship through the shadows, parting the fog with a pendulous, almost eerie silence. It seemed as if the very wind had paused to hold its breath.

Very soon the other ship came into view.

She was a sleek-looking brig with two masts, square-rigged. As Davy had said, she was painted a milky gray that made her difficult to see in the fog. Grange could see no one on deck or up in the rigging through the cloud of black smoke that plumed up from the deck. Her sails were furled, and she bobbed sluggishly on the sea current, seemingly deserted.

Grange steered to port, preparing to come alongside.

“Davy, d’you see anyone?”

“Nay, Cap’n There’s too much smoke. But I think I can make out her name.” A moment passed. “She’s called
Adventurer.”

It wasn’t a familiar craft, but she could be out of one of the northern ports, Newcastle or Aberdeen.

“You there, Simmons,” Grange called to one of the deckhands. “Take some of the men with you down into the hold and bring up buckets and rope so we can board her and put out that fire before she’s lost for good. The rest of you, keep a watch o’er the bulwark for sign of anyone who might be in the water.”

Grange didn’t even want to think about the possibility of hauling in corpses.

He steered the
Hester Mary
until she was nearly abreast of the other craft. He locked the wheel and started toward the bow. It was then he noticed the other flag, a second one fluttering in the breeze from the ship’s jackstaff. It was a flag he’d never before seen, a white background with a shielded blue lion rampant. Above and slightly off center was what looked like a hand clutching something—a dagger? He couldn’t clearly see.

But he did clearly hear, a moment later, when the eerie silence was ripped by a raucous cry.

Bratach Bhan Clann Aoidh!

Grappling hooks hurtled over the side of the sloop, catching on the bulwarks and effectively tethering the two ships shoulder to shoulder.
Hester Mary
groaned against the additional weight, and came to a sudden, jarring halt.

Pandemonium followed.

The figures of some thirty men, maybe more, appeared on the deck of the
Adventurer.
They had wild hair and bearded faces and were screaming the most fearsome noise Grange had ever heard. They began spilling onto the foredeck of the
Hester Mary,
yelling, shrieking, brandishing broadswords, flintlocks, and studded targes.

And then Grange realized it wasn’t screaming he heard. It was the bagpipes, and a single man stood on the foredeck of the
Adventurer,
blaring out an infernal noise.

Good God, they were pirates ... Scottish pirates!

The next minutes flashed before Grange like the sequence of a nightmare. Before he could so much as begin to bark any orders to his crew, the raiders had surrounded them, forcing them into a tight clump in the middle of the quarterdeck. They were the fiercest lot of rabble he’d e’er seen, with their wild faces and fierce eyes that seemed to glow with fire.

“See here,” Grange shouted for want of anything better to say. He didn’t even know if they could understand the king’s tongue. “We’ve nothing for you to take. We are not a merchant ship. I am a simple transport sloop. My cargo is my passengers.”

His heart was pounding in the back of his throat as they stood and glared at him and his crew.

“Easy, mon. We know wha’ you’re carrying.”

Tall, blond, and with the clear blue eyes that revealed the blood of the Norseman, the self-proclaimed leader of the unlawful bunch came forward to face Grange.

He was a veritable mountain of a man wearing the Scottish plaid and three pistols strapped across his chest.

A broadsword with a blade that could fell a small tree stretched from his brawny arm.

He glowered at Grange. “How many passengers?”

When Grange didn’t answer quickly enough, he repeated, this time on a growl, “How many!”

“We’ve just five besides the crew,” he admitted, knowing if he tried to deceive the man, he’d only be found out in the end. “I swear it to you.”

“Get them out here.”

Grange shifted his gaze to his first mate, Burgess. He gave him a single nod, and the man turned, heading for the lower deck.

“Go wit’ him,” the Scotsman said to one of his men. Then he turned to a jumble of others. “You three. To the hold.”

They nodded and were off. The Scot turned to Grange again.

“Any o’ your crew tries to stop us or interferes in any way, they’ll be shot.”

Grange tried to swallow back the lump that was clotting his throat. He’d heard about this sort of thing on the open sea, but never,
never
on the Channel. It was why he’d chosen transport rather than the merchant trade. It was supposed to have been safer.

They stood and waited, and Grange found his gaze straying unwittingly to the blade of the Scotsman’s sword. It was pitted and scarred from past use. He’d little doubt the man wouldn’t hesitate in using it again.

The sounds of clang and clatter started coming from the hold belowdecks as the pirates rummaged and searched through their cargo. Grange didn’t know what they hoped to find. He had only their food supplies and the luggage of his passengers. This wasn’t to have been a lengthy crossing.

Lord Belcourt, and the lady Isabella’s aunt were led onto the deck, along with the only other passengers, two elder French spinsters who were meeting their recently widowed brother in Edinburgh. They were all of them dressed in their nightclothes, having been roused from their beds.

“Whatever has happened, Captain?” asked Lady Fenwycke. She looked very near to a swoon, her bosom heaving beneath the lace of her nightgown. “I was napping below and these ruffians came tearing into my cabin!”

“Yes, what is the meaning of this, Grange?” echoed Lord Belcourt, clearly agitated. His periwig was slightly crooked on his head, as if it had been hastily donned. He looked sternly at the giant Scotsman. “Now see here. What is this all about? I demand an explanation.”

The Scotsman advanced on him, pulling a flintlock from his belt and placing the nose of it right against the man’s chin to silence him. “Here’s yer explanation, Sassenach.”

Everybody froze. Lord Belcourt’s eyes went as wide as saucers. He was trembling. Having spent his life, no doubt from the moment of his birth, intimidating others, he wasn’t at all accustomed to being on the receiving end. Grange wouldn’t have been surprised to see the man wet himself.

Standing on the opposite side of the gathering, Isabella gasped when Idonia suddenly crumbled to the deck. Thankfully Isabella succeeded in catching her just before she hit the deck.

“Please, don’t do this.”

Isabella’s words, softly spoken, had the effect of a thunderous roar, drawing the Scotsman’s attention away from the sniveling Lord Belcourt. While the two French sisters tried to bring Idonia round, fanning her face, loosening the ties of her night rail, Isabella stepped forward. Though inside her heart was pounding, she managed to lift her chin to stare at him. The Scotsman regarded her with a menacing stare. Then she spoke, and it took every effort just to keep her voice from quivering.

“Take whatever it is you’ve come for, but please do not spill blood over it. Surely a man’s life is worth far more than a few possessions.”

The Scotsman simply continued to stare, but his expression did soften. For a moment, Isabella thought she might actually have gotten through to him ... until the foolish Lord Belcourt opened his mouth again.

“You’d best listen to her, Highlander. You’ve no idea the gravity of your error in waylaying us in this manner. Have you any idea who I am? I am a noble lord. I am a member of the Privy Council. The king will have your head on a pike above Tower Hill just like the rest of those filthy Jacob—ack!”

Whatever Belcourt had intended to say was choked off when the Scotsman took him by the laces of his nightshirt and hefted him bodily from the deck. The man’s wig slid from his head, exposing his bald head as he danced about like a thief at the end of the hangman’s rope, his feet dangling and his eyes bulging from his quickly reddening face. The Scotsman forced the nose of his pistol past Lord Belcourt’s trembling lips.

“Threaten me with yer charlatan of a king again, Sassenach, and you’ll find yerself wit’ a mouthful of black powder instead of teeth ...”

He cocked his pistol.

The two French sisters screamed.

Idonia, who had momentarily revived, fainted once again.

Isabella took a step forward, holding out her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Please, I beseech you ...”

“Fergus!” interrupted one of the other pirates. “The lass! Look! She wears the—”

“Wheesht!”

The Scotsman—who was apparently named Fergus—dropped Lord Belcourt, dropped him hard so that he landed on his rump with a thump. Belcourt started yanking on his nightshirt, gasping for air as he fought to loosen the ties. Then the two, Fergus and the other, started arguing in Gaelic—Isabella recognized the rich throatiness of the words from her interlude with the Comte de St. Germain at Versailles. She couldn’t understand them, of course, but whatever the one was saying to Fergus, it had something to do with her, because they both turned to look at her more than once.

Finally, Fergus stepped before her.

“That stone you wear,” he said. “Where did you get it?”

Her fingers went instantly to the chain around her neck. Isabella scolded herself for not having hidden it inside the jacket of her habit when she’d had the chance. They apparently intended to take it.

You must not let loose the stone. Guard it with your life, with your last breath ...

Isabella took courage in the echo of St. Germain’s words. “You may not have it.”

“Oh, really?” He folded his arms across his chest. “And why is that, lassie?”

“Because ... it doesn’t belong to you.”

She realized the ridiculousness of what she’d said the very moment after she’d said it. Good grief! The man was a pirate!

He merely smiled. “Aye? And why should that concern me?”

“Because ... it is enchanted, and if you take it, misfortune will befall you.”

She had no idea where that had come from and a part of her fully expected the Scotsman to laugh, double over and clutch his belly while his comrades saw to the task of depriving her of the stone.

Astonishingly, though, he didn’t. He just looked at her, as if weighing the truth of her words against his desire to take the stone.